It started with us leaving early again to head down to Happy Valley Shanghai. The second HV park of the trip and one of the newer ones. It was this park and it's wooden coaster Fireball, that was the impetus for the trip so expectations were high.
We got there in good time and didn't have the masses that the Beijing park had. We were told that the Fireball coaster would be open at 10, an hour after the park had opened its gates. As soon as they did so everyone started running right, towards that coaster. We took the opportunity to head the other way and ride the rides round that side of the park instead. It seemed to be a good idea as the rides there opened at 0930.
Obvious sign is obvious
The park does have some nice theming, this was probably the "pick" of the bunch!
First up was Lele's Chariot. This was a kiddy coaster with a rollercoaster type layout. It was fine, nothing amazing.
Second up was the mouse coaster, which despite our efforts to sit in a manner that would unbalance the ride to make it spin (not wanted by the operator) we had our train filled with locals the result of which meant no spin whatsoever.
The third ride was the mine train which was found on the central island in a very nicely themed western area. This coaster was a lot of fun even more so when riding with the very petrified locals who kept their heads down screaming for the duration, and the ride wasn't even that intense.
Kat becomes the celeb and is asked for photo opportunities.
Having ridden half the coasters in the park before 1030 and having seen Fireball running (30 minutes before the stated opening time nonetheless), we decided to head over there and when we did so we were met with a fairly heavy queue line. It would appear that this is the major draw for the crowd, to be expected with it being currently the only wooden coaster in the country.
The queue took around 2 hours to get through, we had one run in with a local who was trying to jump the queue and join his friends up front. That got a little heated but the upshot was he waited behind us whilst his friends up front waited for him to catch up (rather amusingly he told his friends that we'd put justice on him). The queue line is quite clever in that most of it is elevated which means you can only queue jump to the back, which is at ground level.
As for the ride itself? Stunning, absolutely brilliant with tons of airtime and smooth banked turns. I had heard bad things along the lines o the ride not being well looked after but I needen't have worried. They had done a very good job looking after the coaster. I was wearing a hooded shirt and the hood spent most of its time bouncing up and down, a good measure of how much airtime the ride had.
Interesting on-ride photo system
With two coasters to go and not much time before we had to meet the others we headed over to the Mega-lite coaster, called rather unimaginably "Mega Lite". Just like it's Japanese cousin this ride was really good with a nice twisted airtime filled course with no rough elements anywhere. The lap strap was a little forgiving on this ride but I did manage to make it click, which was all I needed.
Now at this point we had 30 minutes before we had to meet up to leave the park and still had the dive coaster to go. I made the call to queue for the ride, which was taking between 45 and 60 minutes to get through. This would mean that we'd miss the meeting, so we took the decision to remain in the park and left instructions with others that we'd make our own way to the next one.
Interesting queue line video which educates on upcoming riders to exercise prior to riding.
As it happened the coaster gods must have been smiling on me as we got through in 45 minutes and got a front row ride (not too difficult on a train with only 3 rows). We ran back to the meeting point on the off chance that the group would still be there, they weren't. So we were resigned to doing the taxi. As we got to the main street part of the park, we could see the group up ahead, the gods were not just smiling on me, they must have been grinning like cheshire cats. So we ran again and caught them up, which upset one or two because they'd made the decision to drop the final coaster and meet the group.
The group had been delayed anyway by a couple who hadn't listened to the meeting instructions and had made their way back to the coach without telling anyone.
This sounds like a fairly mundance tale but what made it memorable for me was that the dive coaster was my 1000th roller coaster, a bit geeky and something I should have been more excited about but I'm not driven by the need to ride everything, I just happen to ride what I come across.
Overall Happy Valley is a decent park with a surprising array of good coasters, the 2 generic kiddy rides aside. The park wasn't as busy as the Beijing one, I suspect due to the crowds flocking to the Expo instead. However Fireball is a killer queue and the biggest tip I would give would be to head their first, and don't head in the other direction.
On the last day of the trip two of my friends headed back here to ride the Dive Coaster, which they missed and on a weekday the queues are much much shorter. 4 trains worth of queue on Fireball for instance. So if you're planning to go here you may want to consider doing so on a weekday.
The nearest Metro stations to the park is Dongjiang on Line 9. Its about a mile away.
No comments:
Post a Comment